


where is thy sting

by road_rhythm



Series: S14 codas [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Coda, Episode: s14e18 Absence, Gen, Introspection, flattened affect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 06:31:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18515836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/road_rhythm/pseuds/road_rhythm
Summary: Dean grieves their mother. Sam grieves Dean's grief. That much, at least, he knows he can do.//Coda to 14x18, "Absence."





	where is thy sting

Sam thinks of Billie often. Of course, he's always thought a probably greater than average amount about Death, both as a personification and in general, but when he thinks about Billie, what he tends to think of is how baldly she intended revenge. It feels wrong to apply the word _want_ to a reaper. Sam never read _want_ from her even when she used words like it; but intent—yes. A very strong intent to see them learn respect for death. To make them regret.

Jack furnished them with a body. Dean ran to it and held it. Sam followed more slowly. He crouched down and, after a moment's hesitation, held Dean holding the body.

It seemed correct that way. Dean grieves their mother. Sam grieves his grief. That much, at least, he knows he can do.

Now, looking through these pictures, he lets himself ask whether he has more within him. Certainly he's sad. Lost? Yes, some of that. Not the kind of lost he thinks he would be if he'd known his mother all his life, though.

This is not the first time he's looked at the pictures—like, sat down and looked at them, as an activity. He's the one who keeps a shoebox of these things, after all. He might not keep pictures on his walls, or on his desk, or on his nightstand, but more than once he's sat down and gone through the pictures, plucked their edges with his thumbs, flipped them over to read the information on the back. _Honeymoon, 1975. The Winchesters - John, Mary, Dean and Little Sammy._ (He knows all their legends.) He did this both before Amara brought her back and after, and what he would feel looking at them was not the same thing he felt when his mother was actually in the room. The two sets of emotions were related but distinct, like two different artists' drawings of the same subject.

Sometimes, maybe, he tried to make himself feel something. To feel the things he assumed he should feel. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. It's the inconsistency of his emotions toward his mother that's left Sam uneasy, because a lot of the time all he could feel was the anxiety of not being certain whether he was feeling what he should, while other times he felt so much and all at once that he couldn't understand where it went when it vanished.

Did he love his mother? He should know that, right?

He looks at _Mommy with Dean - Little League, 1983_ and thinks about pictures come to life. It was very strange, to have _Mommy with Dean_ come to life in a basement that stank of his own blood and excreta. Almost strange enough to shock him out of seeing pictures whenever he looked at her. Almost, but not quite, and he never really knew her because their relationship became a series of missed opportunities where _Mom_ got in the way of _Mary_ but everything else got in the way of _Mom_.

He wanted to know her, he thinks. He wanted to ask, _What is it like to have your children stolen from you?_ He wanted to ask, _Does it feel like God took them from you, or more like we did?_ He truly did. He wanted to ask these things; he just didn't want to know the answer.

Sam was so jealous of Dean's bond with her. That wasn't an act for that shapeshifter's sake, not totally; it was a true thing that happened to accomplish a practical purpose. He was jealous of Dean's memories of her and maybe a lot more jealous of her memories of Dean, that Dean as a child existed in her mind as something more than a swaddled lump. He could see her lean on these memories, sometimes, or thought he could; could see the relief of being able to produce a memory of the time before and use it to be the thing all three of them thought that they wanted. To Dean she could say, _"Mouse Trap_ was your favorite game, I remember how you used to make sound effects with the pieces"; "Carrots 'n' Peas was your favorite flavor of Gerber's, I remember what color your diapers used to be after" simply didn't have the same force.

_Mommy with Dean. Mary in the Hospital with Dean - Aged 1 Day. Mommy's Little Gentleman - Mother's Day, 1982._ Mary and Dean, mother and son. The photographic evidence is all right there, so Sam feels like an asshole for thinking maybe both of them bonded with ghosts.

What did Rowena call it? A replica, incapable of holding life? Dean held the replica. Sam held his brother's shoulder and the replica's knee. He waited until it felt like Dean was ready to move. It took a long time.

And now he looks at pictures. This is something bereaved people do. He knows it is. He's seen them do it.

He thinks about Billie.

He thinks about etymology. Extremity ( _n_ ): from Latin _extrēmitās_ (border, perimeter; ending), from _extrēmus_ (situated or occurring at the end; extreme in degree), from _exter_ (external, outward). Derived terms: extremism, extremist, extreme unction, _in extremis_.

Sam and Dean's lives are _extreme_. They have often had to perform in moments of _extremity_. Others have remarked on the _extremeness_ of their actions. When Dean died the first time, Sam was _extremely_ broken up about it. And the second. And the third. Nos. 4 – 126 were a little weird. The 127th was worse than the first, though. The 128th was the worst.

Nos. 129 – 131 must, of a necessity, be measured against no. 128. And must, by definition, lose.

What is fear? Sam used to think fear was poison. Before he thought it was poison, and sometimes during, he thought it was common sense. Now he thinks it's salt.

He wants to feel more than this. It's not his fault that he can't. Leaving the volume cranked up all the time will eventually burn out ears and speakers alike, and what does _final_ even mean?

Sam wonders sometimes if Dean experiences a version of it, too. If Dean is also going through the motions. If he really _feels_ the grief he's displaying—not whether he feels it at all, but whether it goes quite all the way down to the bottom. If even breaking chairs against walls is to some extent performance. If some of the fear of death and all that spiders out from it has become at least a little bit habit, even with Sam. Sam wonders these things, and then he feels like a traitor.

He stares at Mary's face. He will do this again, maybe with a glass at his elbow. He will do other things, like write in a journal and run too much, and maybe, eventually, the grief will come. Maybe it will be raw and deep and alive.

Absence ( _n_ ). 1: a state or condition in which something expected, wanted, or looked for is not present or does not exist. 2a: a failure to be present at a usual or expected place: the state of being absent. 3: lack; deficiency; nonexistence. 4: Inattention to things present; abstraction (of mind). From Latin _absentia_.

He didn't think Billie would take her revenge _in absentia_. Maybe Death always knew that she already had.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to write a coda to this episode, because it left me feeling... so very little. Then with about an hour to spare before 14x19 dropped, I discovered that I had feelings about how little I felt. Crossposted from [Tumblr](http://madbadandplaid.tumblr.com/post/184282445893/fic-where-is-thy-sting).


End file.
